02 February 2014

Orang Finlandia Monitor Radio AM Surabaya

Hello Hurek. I am just reading about your story of RPW and what type program they are transmitting on AM band, exactly on 1449 kHz and why they wanted to stay there, not moving to FM. My hobby is dx-listening and during the last three years I have been very lucky with hearing Surabayan radio station on AM band here in Finland.

Those three stations are Radio Yasmara on 1152 kHz, Radio Sangkakala on 1062 kHz and yesterday evening I understood that I have heard also Radio Pertanian Wonocolo on 1449 kHz 31st of December 2013.

Listening of those stations has been highlight of my hobby. Some years ago I was keeping that impossible, but when I heard Radio Sangkakala and Radio Yasmara the same evening 9th of October 2011, I started to believe that some other station could be possible. Recent years Indonesia was full of private and pirate radio stations on AM band, now it seems that only few are left and some new pirate stations has appeared.

On attached MP3 files you can hear what they sound here in Finland, more than 10000 km distance from Surabaya. Radio Sangkakala is having 10 kW transmitter and you can hear them very clearly. Radio Yasmara is having morning pray and RPW was sending live or recorded puppet theater with Gamelan music. RPW is having the weakest signal, it is better to use headphones when listening these MP3 audio files.

I hope that you have some contacts to these three stations, at least to RPW. I have tried to reach them by email, twitter or Facebook without any good result. If you could help me with proper email to the right person working on this station I would like ask them to verify reception here in Finland.

I am not anymore collecting so much these verification as a young boy, but Indonesian AM stations on the AM band are like gems and will be the nicest memories of this long lasting hobby. I started already 1969 and still spend some periods with this hobby. It is good counterweight to my work as a sales director.

I noticed that your blog is having many visitors, now you have one reader also from Finland.

DXing means listening to far-away — usually foreign — radio stations. Listening to your regular hometown station is not DXing, but listening to a similar station thousands of kilometers away, outside the normal coverage area, is DXing.

"D" is said to mean distance and "X" refers to the unknown. DXers — hobbyists who enjoy DXing — try to pick up radio stations, which normally would not be audible at such a distance.

I was reading reader’s comments on your blogsite about my hobby. DX-listening has vanished around the World, here in Scandinavia we are having nearly the best location to do that. Similar as in New Zealand. We are far from Central-Europe, Russia is soon empty of MW-stations too. Perhaps this is the biggest reason why DX-listening is still alive here. Next time I will visit in our radio shack at the end of March.

We have also considered to established temporary radio stations around the World, but one good idea would be also to produce some programs aired by local stations in different countries. That is a little bit the same as radio amateurs are doing. Every year we are also voting the most dx-friendly radio station.

You are having now one volcano active there in Indonesia, it has been an issue in our TV. How are things now in Indonesia? Very little news here about economy and other aspects. We are having depression here in Europe but finally there are some signs that economy in starting to get better.

Martti, there is one entry in the Oscar's documentary cateogory, about Indonesia, specifically about the mass murder that happened in 1965-1966. That's news among the educated. The presidential election and legislative election are coming up (legislative first) this year. The Governor of Jakarta Joko Widodo (Jokowi) is the most popular, but he has not been nominated by his party yet. Indonesian economy is slowing down due to China slowdown and tightening monetary policy from USA. At least Scandinavia and Germany are doing much better than the rest of Europe